Day 146: Richard the Second in prison

     "Old boy Richard was right," Newton told me when I arrived at his cell the following week.     "About what?"     "Pacing. We all do it. Man! Where does Shakespeare get this insight?"     I had come to prison to teach prisoners about Shakespeare, but I would learn from them at least as much as I would teach to them. "Maybe he did time in prison himself," I told him. "We just don't know much about his life at all. Some people doubt that he even existed." Then I added, "Tell me about the pacing."     "Everybody does it, even if they don't acknowledge it," Newton explained. "Just like animals. When you lock an animal in a cage, for a while it just sits there and waits, but over time, once it accepts its confinement, it starts pacing, and that's when caregivers start worrying. When tigers start to pace, it's taken the wild out of them. The psychological shift is happening. We do the same thing. If you had cameras on, you'd see that's exactly what we do: sit around a while, get involved on the range, but over time, after the novelty wears off, we start pacing--just like the cats, you know what I mean? Doing the exact same thing. Everybody paces. And that's what they're all doing: playing out these fantasies in their head. You know, like old boy Richard."

from Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard,
by Laura Bates

If Dr. Bates can get prisoners in solitary confinement, many of whom have no more than a fifth-grade education, to study this play and come up with real insights, then I guess I should be able to keep going with it. I'll let you know how it goes.